Transcend
by sparkstoaflame
Summary: One hundred prompts, one hundred lives, one hundred instants. One hundred moments telling of the lives of the four main LoK characters. / 2. Young: He winds the scarf around his neck and buries his nose in it because the wind is still blowing.
1. Star

**author's note** | this is a side project of mine that i will probably be updating whenever i get the inspiration. i don't have a set plan for it, so...

* * *

**Transcend**

_Canon/speculative/AU._

One hundred universes, one hundred lives, one hundred instants. One hundred moments telling of the lives of the four main LoK characters. (They're not necessarily related.)

_Various pairings._

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_cover image credit to _**Witek** ("Northern Lights, Spitsbergen" | Canon 5D, Tamron 14.3.8)

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傳說

**Part One** – Legend

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_[theme set_ _**alpha**__]__**  
**_(prompt #30)

.

**I. **Star  
_korra_

**genre:** spiritual/angst | speculative

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_[i will be chasing the starlight_  
_until the end of my life]_

.

.

Her mother always used to tell her when she was a little girl that the twinkling dots of light soaring high above them in the night sky, those things called _stars_, were each a different spirit. And they were always watching. Always, always watching the humans still alive on the earth, the humans who leave their footprints down in the Material World below.

Korra promptly announced that this had to be a gross violation of basic human rights, as a breach of a right to _privacy_ in one's life. Or something deeply philosophical like that in four-year-old speak:

"Does that mean that the stars watch us go to the _potty?!_ Thas' really, _really _weird."

"...Good night, Korra."

Her mother gently kissed her on the tip of her nose and turned her into bed.

.

It was only after her teachers from the White Lotus start mentioning Avatar Aang as her predecessor that Korra realized, with the naïvety of a five-year-old, _Does that mean that Aang is a star?_

.

Being the Avatar came with a lot of perks.

She was the master of all four elements. Water, earth, fire, and air. (Well, supposedly air. She hadn't ever been able to produce even a single puff of wind in all of her sixteen years of life.) Almost universally adored. Her parents, her teachers, the White Lotus. (All right, so what if her firebending master had had it out for her ever since that fateful day she almost seared his ear off?) Arguably the most powerful being in the world.

Korra was the Avatar. So Korra was all of this and more. Korra was a living embodiment of a legend, a _timeless_ legend whose unknown beginning stretched back thousands of years ago.

And of course, Korra was the successor of Avatar _Aang_. Avatar _Aang_ who defeated Fire Lord Ozai when he was twelve years old, Avatar _Aang_ who's so much better than her in every single damn thing she can cook up, Avatar _Aang_ who never ever had anger management issues and when he did he got over them quickly and _learned_ from his mistakes, Avatar _Aang_ who could cook fruit pies and had probably never made something inedible in his life.

Here she is. Korra, _thirteen years old_, the Avatar from the Southern Water Tribe, who has yet to leave this hellhole they call a _White Lotus Compound_ and achieve anything in life, Korra who excels at everything she does and doesn't try to remain modest, Korra who had _plenty_ of anger management issues and sets fire to anything (or anyone) she disliked, Korra who couldn't cook a thing and could even burn tea and didn't even know how she did that.

Korra isn't the story of Korra's life. Aang is the story of Korra's life. Everything she does is measured against his towering achievements. Meaning that her passing her waterbending master test with flying colors at the tender age of nine was nothing compared to Aang's achievement of connecting with the very Avatar Spirit itself. (Because passing a waterbending test when she was nine definitely had everything to do with total spiritual enlightenment.)

_ Avatar Aang was never as reckless as you,_ they said. _Why aren't you as good as him,_ they said. _You must be the worst Avatar ever,_ they said.

This is exactly why Korra fucking _hated_ being the Avatar.

Because it wasn't ever _Avatar Korra._

It was always _Avatar Aang._

.

The stars were especially pretty tonight, Korra had noticed. They were like gleaming chips of ice scattered across a intricately woven midnight blue tapestry, several thin and dark gray wisps of a cloud lethargically swimming through the fresh air.

She was going to take her earthbending master test the next day. And she promised herself that she would _pass it_. Because that's what Avatar Aang would do.

He would pass it.

That night Korra wondered whether or not he would be watching her from the sky tomorrow, even though the stars were not present during daytime. She wondered what he thought of her, and she wondered what he was like.

That night Korra cried and wondered whether or not one of the stars in the millions rising above her was_ watching_ her cry. This of course caused the tears to stop from flowing. Because Avatar Aang never cried.

_Right?_

Avatar Aang was perfect. He was oh-so-definitely perfect. So Korra had to be perfect. Because she's the immediate successor of Aang. She can't be the one to soil his achievements and his legacy.

_Right?__ I have to be perfect._

She looked up.

The stars twinkled brightly in the night as they always did. And they gave her an answer that she didn't and couldn't believe.

Korra looked down at her ratty sealskin boots and decided that the stars had to be playing a _joke_ on her now.

Avatar Aang was probably laughing.

.

From the Spirit World the bald man with a blue arrow tatooed on his forehead watched the Water Tribe girl stare at the stars through a thick haze of mist.

Avatar Aang was very much not laughing.

.

Korra passed her earthbending test the next day.

Now all she had to do was master firebending and earthbending and defeat and remove the bending from a psychopathic Fire Lord who was dead, and then she would be like Aang.

Just. Like. Fucking. Aang.

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The stars tried to tell her that, "No. You don't have to be perfect. Because you don't have to be Aang. Aang doesn't define you, he isn't you. You don't have to be anyone else. You don't have to emulate anyone either. You don't have to be anything.

"All you have to be is yourself."

.

The stars have been blacked out by Vaatu's darkness when she loses her connection to Raava and then regains it once more.

And when Raava and Korra reunite Aang isn't there anymore. Neither is Roku, nor Kyoshi, nor Yangchen. She's lost all of them. Her connection to her past lives. Even if she wanted to access their knowledge she couldn't. Because she's a new Avatar. The first Avatar in the second age.

It hurts, but it's okay.

And it hasn't been Aang, or Roku, or Kyoshi ever since.

It's only Korra.

Just.

Korra.

.

.

_[far away from the memories_  
_of the people who care if i live or die]_

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**end notes** | ...i like writing korra like that. ;_; and i know that aang isn't as perfect as i listed, but i'm assuming that this is what the white lotus told korra when she was training about her famed predecessor...

if you want to see korra with her hair down again, read, rate, review, and fav/follow!


	2. Young

**author's note** | thanks for the favs, follows, and reviews! :3

* * *

**Transcend**

_Canon/speculative/AU._

One hundred universes, one hundred lives, one hundred instants. One hundred moments telling of the lives of the four main LoK characters. (They're not necessarily related.)

_Various pairings._

* * *

傳說

**Part One** – Legend

* * *

_[theme set_ _**epsilon**]**  
**_(prompt #03)

.

**II. **Young  
_mako_

**genre:** family/tragedy | speculative

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_[why does it feel like night today?  
something in here's not right today]_

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A quavering voice. A tug at the hem of his tunic:

"Mako?"

Another pull.

The wind blows in, a sharp and mournful howl of a sound: it blows into the eaves and cracks of the dilipatated shack they call a home, rustling loose fabric, whipping bits and ends of cracked brown leaves into corners.

"Mako? Why is mommy on the floor?"

_Yank._ More insistent now. More panicked.

"Mako? Mako, can you hear me?"

Bolin tugs at his coat again, his bright green eyes alight with a childish innocence.

"Mako, where's daddy? And why is mommy lying there?"

_Mommy's dead and daddy's dead and I saw that man with long black hair and amber eyes burn daddy alive and mommy tried to stop him but she suffocated because of the smoke._

How he would be able to tell that to a five-year-old, Mako has no idea, so instead he blinks at his little brother languidly, eyes cloudy with grief, but if Bolin saw the despair, he doesn't comment upon it.

"Mommy's...asleep."

"On the floor?"

"...Yeah."

"'Kay," Bolin amiably agrees, releasing Mako's shirt and smiling a big and toothy smile that has a gap where his upper left incisor should be. And Mako has never been more grateful for his little brother's obliviousness.

"Tell me when she wakes up!" the green-eyed boy adds, the brightness layered on top of his tone like sunbeams breaking through a thick blanket of clouds on a gray day. "She promised me she'd tell me the story about _O-ma-shu _again!"

"Right," the firebender replies in a small voice.

"'M goin' outside to play with Kilaun!" Bolin calls out as he scampers out of the room, happiness evident in his every gesture.

"Right," nine-year-old Mako says again, because he can't get anything else out through the lump in his throat.

He looks at mommy again and sees daddy's red scarf peeking out from her ratty pockets and then he thinks about how daddy's remains had been carted away and dumped into the sea to float out into the unknown.

He stares at mommy's still form on the figure because he can't tear his eyes away _now_, and he can't stay in here, he can't stay in this cramped hole of a shack any longer, he tells himself that he and Bo definitely _have to go_ because the bad man is still on the loose and he saw Mako and what if he comes after him and Bolin next?

His feet don't move and he can hear Bolin laughing from outside.

The ends of the scarf spills out onto the dusty floor as he tentatively pulls it out of mommy's pocket, as if he's scared that it might bite him.

Sinking against the wall. Rump hitting the ground with a muffled _thump_. Eyes staring blankly out into the distance. Pale and thin hands shaking violently. Listening to Bolin's laughter.

He winds the scarf around his neck and buries his nose in it because the wind is still blowing.

.

.

_[a face that awakes when i close my eyes..._  
_...a face that laughs every time they fall]_

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**end notes** | _wow_ this was pathetic and _wow_ how fucking unrealistic... ._.

asami's up next with **Safe**; and then it's wan/raava with **One**.


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